• Mathematics is NOT a spectactor sport, and just like you can not become proficient at the guitar by listening to someone else play it, you can not become proficient at probability theory without doing lots and lots of problems (and programs).
• You will do 12 assignments, normally one each week, consisting (typically) of 12 problems (8 analytical and 4 lab problems) based on the preceeding lectures; homeworks will be due at midnight Thursday night, with one day late penalty of 10%. (Exact details below.)
• New homeworks will be posted Thursday night or Friday morning; the labs will be on Friday, and introduce you to the programming part of the homework for the next cycle.
• I will drop the lowest homework at the end of the term; if there are serious disruptions to the schedule due to Covid, I may decide to drop the lowest two, however, you should NOT depend on this.

Late Policy

Homeworks are due at midnight on Thursday in Gradescope. You can submit up to 24 hours late for a 10% penalty. Each of these deadllines has a 6-hour "grace period" so you may submit up to Friday morning 6am for full credit, and Saturday morning 6am with the late penalty.  

There will be no extensions to individuals except for "acts of God" (death in the family etc. -- your laptop breaking is not an act of God, nor is a job interview--unless you died and your interview is with God, in which case, yeah sure, you get the extension :-).   I let the grading process run as it does, and I make decisions about exceptions to policy ONLY at the end of term. So my apologies in advance when you ask me for an extension in a moment of crisis, I will unfortunately have to refuse you and remind you that the lowest homework is dropped for *exactly* this reason.

 

• There will be a midterm and a final exam; I'll post the midterm date well in advance on the class web page; the date for the final exam is Tuesday, May 4th from 3 - 5pm. I will provide alternate times (probably the following day in the morning) for those in time zones very different from Boston.

• 40% Homeworks (I will drop the lowest homework score)
• 25% Midterm
• 35% Final Exam (cumulative, but weighted towards material after the midterm)

• I can not give individual extensions to homework deadlines, as this would be unfair to the rest of the class who were required to observe the deadline. We all have occasions when other deadlines, crashed laptops, non-critical illnesses, etc. get in the way of making a deadline. But there is simply no fair way in a class of this size to give individual extensions to students who send me a frantic email after missing a deadline. Occasionally we extend a deadline for some good reason (e.g., snowstorm) but in that case I make it a general extension for all students. To account for normal interruptions to your work, we give you a 6-hour grace period and drop the lowest homework. If you feel that this does not adequately cover your particular situation, I invite you to write me a brief email at the end of term and to explain why. I can promise you that I will read it and consider it, but of course I will continue to insist on fairness to all students when I make a decision on your petition.
• There will be no incompletes in this class except for reasons of dire illness near the end of a semester in which all previous work has been completed satisfactorily.
• You can not redo any exam, or do extra work after the semester is over to improve your grade, as this arrangement would then by fairness have to be extended to the rest of the class (an impossible situation).
• You are encouraged to work together on homeworks, but are forbidden to cut and paste or otherwise simply use another persons work, which is plagiarism. See the collaboration policy below.
• I have zero tolerance for any kind of academic misconduct (e.g., cheating on exams), and be assured that I will instantly report violations of the Academic Code to the Academic Conduct Committee. I am a past member and chairman of this committee. Also note that the Gradescope system does automated plagiarism detection.

• Quantitative Reasoning II: Students will frame, analyze, and solve complex problems using probabilistic, computational, and statistical methods. They will employ these tools to solve critical problems in computer science and related disciplines, and to formulate, test, and proof assertions using evidence and mathematical reasoning; they will communicate this information numerically and visually in the form of charts and graphs. Finally, they will realize the limitations of these computational approaches to important problems, and the risks of using them inappropriately.
• Toolkit: Critical Thinking: Students will be able to identify and use a variety of modes of inference in probability and statistics, and to recognize key areas of difficulty in accessing probabilistic evidence, and the significant role of cognitive bias. A key method throughout is translating English or other non-mathematical language into the language of probability and statistics, and testing solutions using programming. A key component is to be critical in examining one's own prejudices and preconceptions, and to subject all evidence to rigorous examination using appropriate algorithms.

Collaboration policy for this class is as follows.

• You are strongly encouraged to collaborate with one another in working on the problem sets and labs!
• You will learn twice as much by teaching another student something you think you know, and discussing it actively. One of my favorite quotes: "Teaching is learning twice."
• But you will learn HALF as much or perhaps NOTHING if you passively accept solutions without understanding them: this is like going to the gym twice a week and having someone show you how to lift weights while you watch, and then wondering after several months why you are still not in shape!
• Collaboration should have the aim of learning the basic definitions of the mathematical objects we are studying, and then learning the manipulations and processes we subject those objects to. Both are necessary, but learning definitions is only the first 10%....
• You are forbidden to simply copy the answer of another student as a means of satisfying the homework part of the grade--be warned that if you do this, you will perform disasterously on the exams, in addition to violating my collaboration policy, and almost certain generating a message to me from the Gradescope plagiarism detector.
• These policies are intended to promote learning. Please think carefully about how you approach the homeworks, as they are the primary means by which you learn the material.